What is the wrong with the world

Yesterday I was over at my girl Ana's reading this post and it made total sense to me. I have to agree, I am not colorblind and I don't think that you should use it that way. If your colorblind in the sense that you treat/judge people based on their acts great. But this is the problem I had today.

As many of you know I have been "working" and now that school is out there are plenty of older kids that wouldn't be there while I was there. (I usually leave around noon or 1pm) Most of these kids are good kids, aren't to loud, mess with the dog to badly, etc but of course like any school there aren't a few bad apples. P and M have been there a lot longer than me so of course they think they aca get away a lot of things like not taking off their shoes, pushing the younger ones around, etc. Now I don't know their home situation but I do know that at least one of them is mixed. Today P called me the N word. I know I know, I just threw it out there but it's like pulling a band-aid off, gotta do it quick.

I was a little pissed when he said that. I asked him if he knew the meaning of the word, he said "yes, that he was cool", that his brother calls him that, all with a smile on his face. I told him that that word is not a "cool" word, that that is what slave owners call black (notice i didn't use it in past tense), that is what white supremacy call black people. His response? "Your a n***** too."
My response? "No, I am not and neither are you. That is not a word to be proud of. It's not a word that you should be saying just to say. That is a derogatory word."

I was a little thrown off as to what I should tell him. I don't know him well enough to tell him a whole lot, I don't know what his family life is, so did I say enough? Did I tell him enough to make him understand the meaning of the word? I doubt it. What I wanted to tell him is how mean, spiteful, ignorant, hateful word that word is? That it's not something that we should be using i our everyday life? That just because it's used in rap music doesn't make it a good word? That it's not cool to be one? Read this article, or this one from Ebony. It's not a word I ant my daughter to know/hear but I can't keep it from her. I know that sooner or later it will come up. I will have to tell her about the first time I heard the word, what it means, etc. But P is not my kid I can't tell him that. I can't tell him that his is one of the few words out there that has done so much harm to us as a race/culture, the pain that our ancestors felt upon hearing that word. I wanted to much to hug him and tell him what the word really means. But I can't. All I can do is hold onto the pain and hope that things change.